beyond any study, except Divinity proper, and I try to make up for
lost time. There are admirable books in my possession which
facilitate the acquisition of critical scholarship very much, and I
work at these, principally applying it to New Test. Greek, LXX, &c.
But my real education began, I think, with my first foreign trip. It
seems as if there was not time for all this, for I have Hebrew,
Arabic, &c., to go on with (though this is a slow process), Pearson,
Hooker, Blunt on the Reformation (a mere sketch which I read in a day
or two at odd times), Commentaries, Trench's Books on Parables and
Miracles, which are in my room at home, and would in parts interest
you; he is a writer of good common sense, and a well-read man). But
I of course want to be reading history as well, and that involves a
good deal; physical geography, geology, &c., yet one things helps
another very much. I don't work quite as methodically as I ought;
and I much want some one to discuss matters with relating to what I
read. I don't say all this, I am sure you know, as if I wanted to
make out that I am working at grand subjects. I know exceeding
little of any one of them, so little history, e.g., that a school
girl could expose my ignorance directly, but I like to know what we
are doing among ourselves, and we all get to know each other better
thereby. I felt so much of late with regard to Jem, that a natural
reserve prevents so often members even of the same family from
communicating freely to each other their opinions, business, habits
of life, experiences of sympathy, approval, disapproval, and the
like; and when one member is gone, then it is felt how much more
closely such a habit of dealing with each other would have taught us
to know him.... Nothing tests one's knowledge so well as questions
and answers upon what we have read, stating difficulties, arguments
which we can't understand, &c., to each other. Ladies who have no
profession to prepare for, in spite of a very large correspondence